HELP! Baby Crying.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
21

We did crying it out (cold turkey, not Ferberizing) at 6 months on the advice of our pediatrician. She said they don’t need to eat during the night after about that point. It only took 1 session for my daughter and about 1 1/2 for my son. Boths kids were perfectly normal the next morning

They are 9 and 11 now and have been very good sleepers ever since, even when they are sick. We try to keep pretty regular hours, especially on school nights.

I think that trying it much later than 6 months would have been more difficult.

22

No problems at all. But like cher3 says, we kept regular hours and routines. Naptime was sacred in this house, and bedtime was too (with some exceptions–holidays etc). All of my kids were “good” sleepers; as teens, Daughter was an early riser and #1 son a very late one. #2 son is still only 10, so we don’t know about him.
Everyone is different, but I do think that a regular, stable bedtime routine (we read aloud after bath, then brushed teeth, then a quiet song by me and that’s all folks…) goes a long way to “cure” “bad” sleepers. Now, Daughter was an early riser as an infant (as in 0500, no matter what), so that may have helped… I’m glad those days are over!

23

My wife and I have a seven month old. We read every book out there. The softer methods were uniformly elaborate and didn’t offer any guarantee of success. After a lot of discussion we let him cry it out. We both consider it a wonderful decision. At this point baby Tom sleeps from 7:00 to 6:00 every night. He takes two naps a day lasting a total of 2-3 hours. Every moment he is awake he is happy and an absolute delight. It was hard, but it didn’t last that long.

I would say this though. For this to work you have to both agree this is what you want to do and stick with the plan. You can wait and let your wife try other methods until you come to the conclusion that the crying won’t kill them. Breaking down just reinforces the behavior you are trying to change and it doesn’t work if you let them cry only to randomly reinforce the idea that if they cry long enough you will come to their rescue. Good luck and good sleep to you. I will ask my wife to remind me what the name of the book we finallly used was, it was wonderful and has really improved our quality of life and his.

24

I can (and do!) pontificate on this at length :slight_smile:

The (relatively) short version:
Baby #1
Tried, first “controlled crying”, then full-on “cry it out” at just under 6 months. (the former being “go in every 20 minutes for brief comfort/pat but don’t feed, pick up or rock”, the latter “just don’t go in”)

The reason for changing from the former to the latter was that we realised that the “going in” part was just unsettling her and pissing her off - we’d go in, she’d get her hopes up that we were going to get her out of that stupid BED … and then go away again! Bloody parents - make up your minds! I had never planned to do the “just leave it and they’ll sort themselves out” bit, but at the time we felt we were out of other options

Anyway, that was six weeks of HELL for all of us - and then it worked and she was fine from then on. I still rather regret being so inflexible on that though, because I think it was rough on her and we could have done better. But them’s the breaks.

Baby #2 - 6 months
Tried one night of the full controlled crying regime. Baby so traumatised, clingy and weepy the next day that I resolved never to do that again. Continued with a heavily modified kinda-controlled-crying regime that still involved feeding and picking up at the midnight wakings. Took a few weeks, then she was fine.

Baby #3 - 6 months
Started off with Big Sister’s Controlled Crying Lite. Took a couple of weeks, then he was fine.

Kids are now 5 1/2, 3 1/2 and 1 1/2 and none of them have evidenced any sleep problems, including the oldest who got the tough regime.

25

You know, mostly the kids are fine. Whichever methods their parents chose. Because mostly the kids are fine, anyway. Mostly they are fine if they sleep on their tummies and mostly they are fine if they cry ti out and mostly they are fine if they never see a botle for the first four years and also mostly they are fine if they never encounter a human breast in the wild. Despite many dire predictions I am here to tell you that mostly they are fine if they don’t wear a hat which covers their ears.

This is comforting on some level. Nevertheless in cultures which do not involve large and supportive extended family and many cousins, parents (and especially parents of first/only children) must worry. There are very good and valid reasons for this, most of which amount to your brain telling you that you are dealing with something Very Important Here and also being worrisomely aware that there is a certain lack of outside input/experience into this Very Important Thing.

What, wonders your brain in its spare time, if I am wrong? What if I am not up to the task? What then? Surely there must be some dreadful consequence which will follow?

Well, not so much really. It can happen but mostly it does not. What does happen more often is that the relationships which make up the family are altered slowly and subtly by many small decisions over time, all unknowing because the Big Picture can get lost in the hyperfocus of the early months and years.

It is an important stage in the development of a parent and it can go wrong in so many ways. Hyperfocus is hard on the developing parent. Unhappily there aren’t any Early Intervention Programs for developing parents. Happily, most parents remain plastic far longer than was previously believed.

This was why I myself did not address the actual question in the OP – because the actual decision almost certainly does not really matter except to the extent that it reveals something amiss in the view of the Big Picture. The Big Picture being, what relationship do you want to create between father/mother/child/world, long term?

It´s all about process – not what decision is made but instead how is the decision made reached?

26

Eldest slept six hours straight on his first day of life (scaring the crap out of me in the process) and continued to sleep at night thereafter, barring teething or the like. This was of course because I had a routine. This routine involved rocking him to sleep, which led many people to ask me what if I was still rocking him to sleep at five years old. I replied that then I expected he would know all the words to Hush Little Baby. He never did learn them, he never made it awake to the billy goat.

Then I had Youngest. Who did not sleep through the night regularly until he was four. Who by the way does know all the words to Hush Little Baby, as well as Slaap Kindje Slaapand furthermore Roe, Roe Kindje (which are dutch lullabies). They did not put him to sleep but he did learn to sing which is I suppose worth something. He has a boy soprano voice to make a choirmaster weep.

In four years´ time, I had the opportunity to try out any number of approaches on Youngest each and every one of which led to bupkis. He kept waking up. The single most effective technique I used was not in any parenting book – it was to put him in bed with his brother. Then he also woke up but did not cry. So he slept with his brother for a very long time.

He is now seven and Eldest is nine and they are both good sleepers. :slight_smile:

27

the only thing is that each kid is different. If you’re outside the spectrum, the “expert” advice sucks big time. We’re a co sleeping type household. I’m certainly of the “let 'em cry and increase the intervals” rather than “cry it out all night if need be”.

My youngest has special needs and sleeping through is a problem. She still wakes up after 4-6 hours, wide freaking awake, at least a couple of times per week for a couple of hours. She’s been doing that for a couple of years and she is four. I won’t go into the full nitty gritty, but the only thing we haven’t tried is industrial strength drugs.

Thing is, it’s a marathon and not a race. Most kid transition things take a loooooooong time unless you’re lucky. It’s *usually *not a weekend conversion.

28

At about 8-9 months of age babies learn how to manipulate.
We didn’t have sleep issues with our first one. Oh, that would have been too easy.

We had Controlled Barfing.

Anytime he woke up and realized that he was not in the middle of* What Was Going On *or Mama Wasn’t Here or HEY! I’m In MAH CRIB!!!11! he would barf.

5-7 times a week.

He was never sick.

When we realized he was controlling us, reading up on this very odd part of baby-dom was very difficult. Warranting possibly a couple of lines in all of the parenting books out there. It think it was Sears that said let the baby sleep in the vomit to teach it a lesson. All I could think of was, " Ugh, no. Vomit has acid in it and it lifts the colors off sheets/blankets/carpet." (Trust me on this matter. We have a vomit splay pattern on our son’s bedroom carpet that is now hidden with another rug.)

This charming part of our lives lasted until he was 2.

When he puked, one would clean him and the crib up the other would clean the carpet. We did not interact with him other than cleaning him up. It was like a pit stop. Done in two minutes.

It got so I could hear the thingie in his throat make the noise (a click) that signalled he was going to barf. I would rip off my shirt and catch the vomit so as to make clean up mucho easier.

Did this lovely trick in public once, thankfully I had a sweatshirt on.

The parents were in awe of my skillz.
Our son is almost 11 now and I still refer to him from time to time as The Regurgitator.

29

Yup. Like eleanorigby, my parents were very big on the sacred bedtime routine. Which worked like a charm on my brother. Me–I don’t think I’ve ever slept the night through in 30 years. I don’t think of it as a disorder, I’m just not wired to get 8 hours straight. My parents taught me not to bug them, but they never succeeded in getting me to sleep all the way through the night. (Like Marienee’s youngest, I would go lay down in my brother’s room. Still didn’t sleep, but at least I wasn’t scared.)

30

Shirley, I have been in awe of your parenting skillz since I first noticed you posting about your kids on the SDMB. This story made me laugh out loud for real (although it would have been even better if you hadn’t had the sweatshirt on).

31

Thank you! You did a much better job of communicating this than I did!

32

at about 8-9 months babies learn to try out different communication methods to get their needs met. Manipulation is a VERY different thing.

33

Thank you!

Too bad " Catching Vomit" is not something one can put on a resume.

34

I’m also one of those who don’t feel the “cry it out” method is appropriate. And don’t think I haven’t had reason to deeply consider my stance. For the first two months of her life, my daughter slept on my chest while I (tried to) sleep on the recliner. Many attempts at getting her to sleep in a bassinet or even in bed with me failed so this was what worked. After finally getting her into the crib, I had to rock her to sleep every night and then proceed to feed her every three hours like clockwork until she was nine months old. No soothing, no rocking. HAD to be a feeding. Finally about nine months she graced me with extending her feedings to every four hours.
She’s a year old now and still needs rocked to sleep, and gets up 2-3 times a night for a bottle. I tried the Pickup/Putdown method in the Baby Whisperer book but that was almost two hours of my poor daughter screaming and not understanding what was going on. So I’ve finally decided to just let her figure out her own sleep habits. They’re erratic and all attempts at getting her on a set ‘schedule’ have failed but slowly but surely she’s making her way to a full nights sleep.
And I also agree that you should have consulted your wife before doing something so drastic. If my daughter’s father were in the picture (he’s not) and he did something like that without talking to me first, I’d be furious. Not just annoyed, not irked, full on intense anger.

35

I completely agree that there are just good sleepers and bad sleepers. My older daughter was like your younger daughter. We tried everything (and I mean everything!) and nothing worked. She was still screaming for 30 minutes a night after a week of trying the cry it out method. We would finally get her into a schedule and would get 3-4 weeks of okay sleep and then something would disrupt it (illness, teething, vacation etc) and two days of disruption would lead to another 3-4 weeks of horrible sleep. And she was our first child and both sets of grandparents swore up and down that none of their kids had been like that.

And then my younger daughter slept for something like 5 hours the first day as well. I was in shock. We never did anything special for her…she slept when she was tired and it has been so incredibly easy. She has been sleeping 11 hours a night (barring hunger, teething, illness) since she was about 3-4 months.

My older daughter is now 4 (almost 4) and the younger is 9 months. My older daughter is STILL the one who gives us more trouble to sleep (she still tells me that “sleep is bad”). After the younger was born, the older daughter started waking up several times a night. We were zombies…we would wake up twice with her and once or twice with the baby. Like Marienee, we were advised by our daycare provider (and pseudo-grandmother) to put them to sleep in the same room and were very wary of the suggestion. We figured that they would just wake each other up but instead it has worked wonders! The older daughter is sleeping so much better now! And it is very cute to wake up in the morning and hear them laughing together. :slight_smile:

Regarding manipulation. I think it depends on the child. I would definitely say that my older daughter did try to manipulate us at 9 months. She has always been extremely in tune with body language etc and has always been very good at responding appropriately to get what she wants. The current baby…not so much. She is more of the classic easy baby who is far more interested in physically exploring her environment and getting her body to work (crawl, stand, walk etc) than in people.

36

This is sort of off topic. But I must say, I look forward with longing to the time when I develop this form of grandparental amnesia. I think it must be a little gift from Life´s Fairy Godmother Department, like the gift I was given to not remember much of Eldest´s delivery (At least, I am given to understand that this was a gift. I do not of course remember.)

My own mother swears up and down that not one of her six children cried for no reason. She als swears that we were very responsible when we were left alone in the house. She swears a lot of things. But my youngest siblings are nearly two decades younger than I am and I distinctly recall babies crying for no reason. I also recall the fun game she caught us at, which involved climbing out a second story window, running over the roof, dropping to the adjacent garage roof, then jumping off the corner of that to the trampoline which we strategically placed below and lather, rinse, repeat.

She has no memory of either circumstance oddly enough. I cannot wait until I can also view my children´s youth with such a, um, rosy glow around it.

37

Really, Marienee, you don’t have to wait that long. You just need a few more kids and a few more years…it will all become a blur. “Which one are you?” “Are you the one born at 5:15pm or at 4:03pm?” “First tooth? Well I know one of you was like 4 months and one of you I’m pretty sure was in kindergarten…” I can remember my first one’s first word. The other two? Just change it up depending on when they ask. For my 15 year old, I tell her it was “telephone”.

But on topic, other have said it and it bears repeating— every child is different, every parent is different and children and parents are different at different ages and stages of life. If there was ONE way that worked for everyone, we’d all get that BABY MANUAL sent home from the hospital with the precious little one. Notice they don’t come with one? There’s a reason.

My first precious bundle was a horrible sleeper. She became intimately familiar with Johnny Carson and the local announcements set to classical music and changing colored backgrounds that was the only thing on after that. (Hey, it was 21 years ago, cable tv was brand new and we were LUCKY to Have that Cable). We tried the “let her cry” thing. She would work herself into such a frenzy that she would start coughing and gagging and generally spiraling her way to certain death. This was not a good thing for either of us. To this day, she doesn’t sleep well, but she has a baby of her own who sleeps like a dream.

Baby #2, 5 years later, was sleeping in her crib through the night by the time she was a day old or so (ok, maybe 3 mos or 6 mos, who knows, but it did happen, I swear). She wanted to sleep in her own bed with all the lights out. She still does, 16 years later. Never wanted the door open or a night light. Just wanted to go to sleep and, although a bit of a night owl, once she was out, that was it. She did share a room with her older sister for many years so maybe that made a difference.

Baby #3, another 8 years down the road, slept on my chest for the first 6 months as I sat in a recliner. It just was easier to nurse him and that way I knew he was breathing. Why more paranoid at that point? Can’t really tell you. It was just who I was at the time. After that and to this day, the boy has gone to bed at a routine time and sometimes earlier when he’s tired, and sleeps like a log til the morning. Despite all of the dire predictions from certain baby “experts”, he did not spoil and turn rotten.

Three kids, many years apart, and they were all different and still are. I was/am also a different parent to each of them, in reaction to who they are and what they need. I’m also a mother and that is a different breed than a father. Talk to your wife, come to an agreement, take into account the individual needs of your child and you as parents and be consistent.

And be prepared that the minute you think you have it down and everything’s going beautifully, the very second that thought enters your brain, nothing you’ve been doing will work any more and you’ll be right back here wondering what the hell happened. Don’t worry, we’ll be here waiting.

38

Sorry to let this go for so long, I was off in Taiwan for a week and didn’t have much time to respond. As first time parents, from two different cultures, living by ourselves without our families in a third culture, it’s a little daunting at times.

I guess that I have to get go of the hope that there is just one right magical answer which will solve the problem.

Is this typical? Is this what all, most, or some parents go through? I guess that if you were to have family around it would be easier in some ways, but then harder in others. For example, if you decide to do something which goes against the main trend.

How much do people have the Big Picture discussions? We seem to agree on basic levels, but we don’t necessarily talk about everything explicitly. Looking around, I see a many couples who get into trouble or have fights over the kids, and I wonder if talking in greater detail would help prevent this.

39

Well it very well fucking should be! I am an expert. I also have a “command barfer.”

I can’t abide having them sleep in it though. That smacks of negligence to me.

40

This is my experience exactly. We also tried cry it out - for hours each day for two weeks. It just. Didn’t. Work. He’s almost 3 and is only now becoming a “good” sleeper. Which, for him is going to sleep at 8:30 and waking up at 6:30. There are some kids who just don’t sleep well for whatever reason.

Although I will say - it’s not that I want to strangle parents of good sleepers. I mostly wanted to strangle the parents of good sleepers that told me I was doing it wrong. I can be happy for someone else and enviously dream of sleeping in until 7 a.m. one morning, but being informed of my inadequacy as a parent even after having been advised by my pediatrician and the sleep specialist who supported her recommendation to just let our son sleep with us definitely made me want to strangle someone.

As for the people I wanted to strangle over sleep issues, the loudest among them had a kid who was almost as bad as son. :smiley:

The best parenting advice I can think of is that there will be at least one piece of parenting advice that won’t work for you. When that happens, don’t feel guilty about going against conventional wisdom (assuming it’s safe, of course). And ignore the heck out of anyone who tells you you’re wrong if it’s working for you. If it’s not or it stops, do something else. Oh, yeah. And everything that does work for you now will probably stop working at some point, most likely overnight.